Dear Friends:
Greetings dear brothers and sisters! Indescribable joy, peace beyond all reasonable comprehension, unshakable confidence in your Heavenly Father’s love and the glorious comfort of Holy Spirit’s presence be yours in our Lord Christ Jesus today!
Do you remember the name Jessica McClure? In 1987, at the age of 18 months, she fell into an 8 inch pipe drilled through solid rock to access water far below the surface. (This paper is 8 ½ inches wide.) The unused well was in her aunt’s backyard in Midland, Texas. When she was first discovered trapped in the pipe she was less than 10 feet down. As workers frantically pondered how to set her free, she continued to slip further into the pipe.
The predicament Jessica was in is horrifying to think about! She had one leg underneath her and the other leg was stretched upwards with her foot above her head! Hopelessly, helplessly trapped, she stopped slipping deeper at about 22 feet. The little baby remained confined this way for over two days. Firemen, policemen, drilling experts and rescue workers frantically labored hour after hour to free her. Slowly fighting through solid bedrock, they drilled a parallel shaft beside the well and then chipped away to make a horizontal tunnel to where she was ensnared to set her free. Everyone knew there was the possibility the little baby could continue to slide deeper and deeper into the well. It is gratifying to think of the sacrificial effort and the unstoppable tenacity and the immense energy focused by the whole community, and ultimately from all over the world, as the drama played out on international news. Reaching up from a hole drilled below her, a paramedic was able to pull her free – imagine – after she had spent 56 hours cramped and immovable in that 8 inch pipe!
The hopelessness of little Jessica’s plight and the persistent dedication and interminable labor of her rescuers projects a marvelous reality before us in our minds: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep, if he loses one of them, does not leave the ninety – nine in the wilderness, and go after the one that is lost, until he find it?” Luke 15:4
HE WILL NOT STOP UNTIL HE FINDS THE ONE THAT IS LOST! Oh, dear fellow Christian, may we ever remember from what depths of selfishness and pride and sin that our precious Savior has delivered us. What helpless entanglements in bad habits and painful reaping of what we have sown that He gives us hope to overcome. And still, for so many of us after years in the Faith, we find ourselves struggling with temptations and fears and doubts that we thought could not affect us anymore. Yes, we are saved by Jesus, but we battle on in a sinful world, with a vicious Enemy, and a fallen nature that clings like flypaper. We still lose our way in relationships and circumstances. We still are confronted with our human frailty and weakness. We know much better now than when we first began our Christian walk how dependent we are on the Wisdom that comes from above, the Comfort that Holy Spirit brings us, the deliverance from very real and immediate battles that Jesus stills saves us from! Without our daily, hour by hour, moment by moment fellowship with Father God Almighty how hopeless and how helpless we are in the face of the daily conflict of the Christian walk. But, even when we feel overwhelmed, even when it seems all is lost, HE STILL SEEKS THE ONE THAT GETS LOST UNTIL HE FINDS THEM!
We may feel like giving up. That one hidden away who suffers interminable loneliness and pain in a nursing home bed may feel hopelessly trapped. They may have thought that such circumstances would never befall them. Even today, we may have little reason for joy, or peace or hope in the situations we find ourselves. But we must encourage ourselves in the Lord Jesus. Wherever we are, to whatever depths we seem to have fallen, no matter how hopeless and helpless we feel, we are His little lost lamb, and know this, if we are His child, He never gives up on us!
This message of hope and help for struggling believers is the aim of our work in nursing home ministry. Thanks so much to each of you who help us with your prayers and finances. God bless you – sincerely.
In the Love of Christ,
